


the apocalypse sometimes passes us by

by lyonie17



Category: Fright Night (2011), Sunshine - Robin McKinley
Genre: Crossover, Crossover Pairings, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-18
Updated: 2012-12-18
Packaged: 2017-11-21 10:10:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/596493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lyonie17/pseuds/lyonie17
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I love that Mel is mysterious. Any insight you have into the mysteriousness of Mel would be wonderful."  I couldn't resist the chance to combine two wonderful vampire fandoms.  I hope this tickles your fancy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the apocalypse sometimes passes us by

**Author's Note:**

  * For [norgbelulah](https://archiveofourown.org/users/norgbelulah/gifts).



Billy’s turn to rent the movie wasn't the end of the world.  It felt like it for a couple days is all.  Of course, I'd had that feeling before.  It usually goes away.  
  
 _Don't do anything I wouldn't do.  That doesn't narrow it down. That's like, mini-golf.  And sushi._  
  
After Vegas there was Reno, and Pasadena, and Forks, and St. Louis (that really fucking sucked), and L.A., and Bon Temps, and somewhere in the middle all of those messes (or probably because of them) somebody started the Wars.  Those of us who’d been paying attention, or having our houses and neighbors blown up, weren’t shocked, but the rest tended toward the fodder end of the food chain.  They were called the Voodoo Wars.  Probably because, being food, most people had no idea what the war really was about.    
  
 _Vampirism doesn't generally do a lot for your personality – that is, a lot of good._  
  
Even after the suckers started wholesale kidnapping-and-turning campaigns most people didn't get it.  Peter did.  Peter and Amy and I would try to get ahead of the suckers, warn people that might be targeted.   Sometimes it worked.  Sometimes, they died.  Sometimes, and this I always hated, they should have stayed dead – and then we had to fix it.    
  
It was never as clean as our first outing with Jerry in Vegas.  There are only so many ways to cure a sucker’s victims, and the damn things are one-time use.  Now, of course, the only hope is from a lab and that will be one per customer if they ever figure it out.  I’m not holding my breath.  Everything else was burnt in the Wars, or the suckers have it and that amounts to the same thing.  
  
 _You think I collected all this stuff because it was bitching?_  
  
Back then though, if you had connections to antique dealers, you could maybe find something.  If you had connections like Peter did, you could maybe even find something worthwhile.  If you had a team, and connections, and enough brains to stay in after dark, you might make it a couple years.    
  
Amy made it five.  We lost her when the sucker we were hunting had a partner we didn't have a cure for.  Everyone else had been turned by the dracula-type with the fur coat, but his lolita got Amy.  Peter and I were still arguing about whose fault that was when he disappeared.    
  
My spouse benefits lasted through the hunt for Amy's sucker.  I used the last of it to pay for my first Griffin.  The Griffin paid for itself after that.  The brothers were happy to welcome a guy who was willing to pony-express anywhere.    
  
Early on, even before the Wars, I stopped looking for holy water, and started investing in ink.  If I ever wasn't hunting anymore, I didn't want my history coming after me or anyone else (the older the sucker the longer the memory.)  Eventually, there was enough ink that I could ride through the Bad places and they didn't look at me.    
  
When the Wars ended I became surplus.  Groups of guys in trucks could ferry things across the Bad places and cost less than the cowboys because they had infrastructure. One day I just stopped in the city I was delivering to, found a buddy to crash with, and a bar to bounce for, and that was that.    
  
New Arcadia was the fourth place I stopped after the Wars.  I'd started cooking for the three of us while we were sucker-hunting full-time, because Peter burnt water and Amy would eat junk food all day.  After the Wars, nobody cared about cooking school, just whether the food tasted good enough for people to come back for it. The Seddons are big on collecting people, so after a while I realized the Coffeehouse was probably going to be home unless I chose otherwise.  
  
I knew when I walked in that this was where I'd stay until I couldn't.  The waitress that poured my coffee was part Other, and the baker had something going on that nobody talked about, even after I had something going on with the baker.  No one looked twice at the bike or the tats, and no questions were asked besides would I come in for the breakfast crowd and did I want to join in on movie nights.  
  
Of course, two Charlie's in one Coffeehouse wasn't going to happen.  So I woke up one day as Mel the cook, who stepped out with Sunshine, and went to movie nights at the Seddons', and maybe used to be in a motorcycle gang.  I got attached, to the shiny black monster in the kitchen, and to not talking about things.     
  
Since I didn't talk about things, and Sunshine didn't talk about things, I didn't worry when she left that night.  I worried when she wasn't there making Cinnamon Buns as Big as Your Head the next morning.  I started to panic when she hadn't shown up by that night.  Even went out to her place after work, and had a cup of tea with Miss Yolande so she knew I wasn’t creeping around, and didn’t talk about things. I think Miss Yolande was laughing at me, but since we weren't talking about it, she kept it quiet.    
  
I don’t know what I expected, if I ever saw Sunshine again.  It certainly wasn’t relief.  I’d thought maybe she’d show up at my place and try to make a meal of me.  Definitely was not thinking she’d show up bruised and exhausted but still alive, and baking as though she’d never been gone.  
  
I knew, because she’d talked to the SOFs and was still breathing and walking free, that she hadn’t been turned.  I knew, because she went right on not talking about the things we never talked about, that whatever had happened was bad, but not cataclysmic, not enough to change Sunshine from the girl I knew to someone I might have to go looking for after hours.  
  
That cut that didn’t heal worried me a little.  I hadn’t seen that before, and new things are generally not good.  The cut kind of faded into the shadows though, after she went for the sucker in the alley with the table knife.  Extinct board games aside, that was just not possible.

_Even a magic handler shouldn't have been able to skeg a sucker with a table knife._

Not possible like Charlie Seddon’s stepdaughter the baker being Onyx Blaise’s daughter, Raven, who escaped vamp kidnapping alive and well, and now is a sort of vamp compass.  That kind of thing.  But we don’t talk about it.  We sit in the sun on Mondays, and share the quiet, and are silently thankful that apocalypses sometimes pass us by.

**Author's Note:**

> Lines in italics are quotes from the sources.
> 
> Because this is from Mel/Charley's POV and he doesn't know about it, I have passed over Sunshine's relationship with Con. In my head, though, Con and Sunshine are quietly sharing their evenings.


End file.
